


Happy Memory

by John_Bender



Category: Doctor Who, Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:11:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1646516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Bender/pseuds/John_Bender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Time Lock's chewed him up and spat back out, the Master is at the end of his tether. Left with only one memory. His  one and only happy memory. </p>
<p>*Short 3rd person POV fic bout how the Master could have ended up as Sam Tyler. I know, it's been done before, but this is my take on it. Hope it’s not clashing too badly with either canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Go on, sue me. And I'm gonna sue you back for inspiring me.

*********

The transformation had gone wrong. 

Oh, not just this last one - the one the brush with the Time Lock had forced on him, draining even more energy - and colour - from his degenerated body. 

Neither had it been that darned attempt at resurrection his cunt of a wife so royally fucked up. 

To be perfectly honest, it had started to go pear-shaped long before Professor Yana had stepped into the Doctor’s Tardis for a bit of good ol’ regeneration. But at that point it had truly spiralled out of control. Cause there hadn’t been much good about it. He hadn’t felt it at first. His mind had, by his standards, been right as a rivet. Full-fledged genial Time Lord insanity. But the Tardis had made sure his new body hadn’t been right. The Tardis had made sure his body had stayed human.

To this day he’s amazed the Doctor never smelled the rat. Not even when he’d “refused” to regenerate. Refused, as if. More like couldn’t if, literally, his life depended on it. Of course he’d taken precautions, found a way around the mortality – the freak had to be good for something, after all. But then the stupid cunt...

But he can’t hold on to the thought. Can’t hold on - no, can’t even begin to grasp the solid fury that should accompany it. 

The only memory his mangled brain still has a grip on is so phantasmagoric, it hadn’t even been real while it had been his reality. And on top of that it’s happy. So yeah, again by his standards, as there had been a fair share of hurting and despairing. Especially the first time round, when he hadn’t been aware that he’s capable of both causing and suffering so infinitely more pain. But in the bigger picture that hurt and despair is hardly worth mentioning. 

He’s dubbed it the humanity syndrome. Like, with the Chameleon Arch most brutal, ruthless Time Lords make vulnerable, caring humans. In his case it’s become all a bit freeflowing, of course. He’s a vulnerable brute, the more ruthless the more he cares. But back then...back then, with the memory loss and all, it had almost been like he’d Chamelion-arched himself again. 

All just because the Tardis had, thanks to the Doctor’s usual lack of precision, stranded him not at its last coordinates but a year or so earlier and a few hundred miles off. Not that it would have mattered much, hadn’t he been arrested under suspicion of assault that very first night. He still has no idea if he’d done it, but he wouldn’t put it past himself. Especially with the added madness of a botched regeneration. 

He’d been brought in to CID for questioning, but a blink of an eye later the monkeys had questioned themselves. Or would have, if they’d been aware he’d used his hypnotic powers to lodge himself in their heads as a colleague and, as he’d been on a roll, in that of a random witness as her son. He really could do without a lawsuit while he recovered and figured out his next masterstroke.

So back then, this year and all those miles off, he’d dreamed up a human life.

Back then he’d brought it into detailed hypothetical existence. 

Back then, he’d brought one Sam Tyler into existence.

Only to see him just about blink back out of it in a hit and run a few hours later.

And in the most ironic twist of fate ever, manifest himself in the same breath. 

Trapped in a human body, comatose and amnesic from the accident, he’d fallen for his own dream-scheme. Time-displaced, for good measure, cause that part of him would always be demanding its rights. But be it London in 2006 or Manchester in 1973, essentially he’d, once again, fallen for human hurt and despair, human vulnerability and care. In one word, for happiness.

After he’d woken up he’d remembered who he really was. He’d remembered all that infinitely more pain. So he’d jumped off a roof, hoping that would keep Sam happy. And it did. Until the big man had let the little girl die and was about to kill Sam, too. 

Sam had loved the man. More, maybe, than the girl. And while he’d understood that letting them die was the man’s job, the rejection had still broken Sam’s ridiculous, single, human heart. 

What the man hadn’t understood, though, was that behind this human heart loomed an insane Time Lord mind. And while Sam Tyler had finally blinked out of existence, the Time Lord had blinked himself and his next masterstroke back into it. 

Create a happiness nobody could ever kill. 

Create something vulnerable he could care for.

And if that had meant he had to create it out of pain and despair, so be it.

Bummer the Toclafane transformation had gone wrong as well.


End file.
